March 7-13 is Groundwater Awareness Week.
If we only knew what was in our groundwater — the EPA decided to fail to enforce its mandates as against most industrial wastewater producers, and therefore, mostly, we have no clue whatsoever what is in the water. (N.b., the landing page directs citizens to test their own water. Thanks EPA.) Make no mistake: this was a political decision, and the scientists at the EPA were probably put in untenable positions of either speaking up and getting fired, or else going along until a better political climate for enforcement. Plus, apparently the environmental laws were vague (according the Supreme Court) and so a bunch of corporate polluters weaseled out of being under EPA jurisdiction.
1. Previous posts:
Senator Blanche Lincoln: Promoter of Obesity and Polluting the Water in the Cherokee Nation?
. . . Things Time Mag Ignores in Reporting on Obesity in the Southern USA
2. Senate Agriculture Committee chair, Senator Blanche Lincoln (website)
.
Blanche Lincoln As Ag Chair? Say It Ain’t So
3. Fed anti-obesity recommendations dealing with behavioral modifications and ignoring potential environmental causes:
Recommended Community Strategies and Measurements to Prevent Obesity in the United States
4. Arsenic in chicken feed and ground water:
Roxarsone, 4-Hydroxy -3-nitrobenzenearsonic acid
Comparison of arsenic content in pelletized poultry house waste and biosolids
fertilizer.
Popular press articles about chicken feed, arsenic and water:
Animal Feed and the Food Supply: Chicken and Arsenic
A Deadly Ingredient in a Chicken Dinner
Why do our chicken, our water and our air contain arsenic?
5. NYT article about lack of enforcement of EPA water pollution laws:
6. Arsenic as an endocrine disrupter:
Endocrine Society paper on Endocrine Disrupters (Originally published as: Diamanti-Kandarakis E et al. 2009 Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals: An Endocrine Society Scientific Statement. Endocrine Reviews 30(4):293-342)
National Institute of Environmental Health – Endocrine Disruptor Page
Arsenic disrupts thyroid hormone gene regulation, Davey et al., “Arsenic as an Endocrine Disruptor: Arsenic Disrupts Retinoic Acid Receptor–and Thyroid Hormone Receptor–Mediated Gene Regulation and Thyroid Hormone–Mediated Amphibian Tail Metamorphosis, “ Environ Health Perspect. 116: 165–172 (2008). doi: 10.1289/ehp.10131;
Arsenic exposure is correlated with Type 2 diabetes, Navas-Acien et al., “Arsenic Exposure and Prevalence of Type 2 Diabetes in US Adults,” JAMA 300: 814-822 (2008) PMID: 18714061
7. Related post
Soil contaminants and the use of sewerage sludge for agricultural crop fertilizers
8. Neither here nor there
National Resources Defense Counsel – Water Page
Video of making a PET liquid container using blow molding machine Plastics News video 10/30
The groundwater scandal continues apace. I grew up in Iowa, and I’m no genius, but it just never seemed that hard to figure out what all that atrazine and other farm chemicals were going to do to the water table over time.
Everybody should know their watershed…
Hey DH —
Mega-Agriculture has been a blessing and a curse — the price of food goes down but at what ultimate cost?
Like, sterilized sewerage sludge is used as fertilizer — seems like a good idea, and all — but since industrial waste is mixed with residential waste, there’s metals and these get taken up by plants.